The 24 Deadly Mistakes That Kept Me Broke For 6 Years And How To Avoid Them

Note: I have previously published this article on Kingged.Com. It’s only being re-published here for my blog audience to read.

You see, I started marketing online in 2004 and my first breakthrough didn’t come until 2010. That is 6 years of absolute total failure. So as you can see, I might even pass for an award as the greatest failure online. Ha ha!

However, things turned around very quickly, the moment I DECIDED to begin doing things differently. The moment I changed, everything else changed for me and in my first year after that DECISION, I grossed over $50,000 in online income.

So what changed? You might ask…

I DISCOVERED the TRUTH…The truth? Yes, the truth. I discovered 3 actually…

Truth #1: I discovered that everyone at the top today started from the bottom and WORKED their way to the top. My question was how did they do it? That led me to the second truth…

Truth #2:I discovered that the people at the top were not necessarily in any way better or smarter than me; they were just doing things differently.

So what were they doing that I wasn’t doing? Or to phrase this in a better way, how were they doing things differently from me?

This led me to discover truth #3. This one was revealed to me through Brian Tracy’s book: “Eat That Frog”. If you haven’t read the book, I encourage you to do so because it will change your life. If you want, you can simply listen to the FULL audio version here.

Truth #3: I discovered that: “The ability to concentrate single-mindedly on your most important task, to do it well and to finish it completely is the key to great success, achievement, respect, status and happiness in life” – Brian Tracy.

Here’s The Secret: the successful people work ALL DAY LONG only on their most important tasks and they make sure they complete them. On the other hand, failures work only on their low value tasks and even when they complete the tasks very well, it doesn't have no real significant financial consequences on their life.

This was an eye opener for me. It was this realization that led me to make a DECISION to start working only on my highest value tasks and doing them fast and STICKING with them until completed. And when I began doing this, my life just started to change IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION.

Now, there you have it, the ultimate secret to achieving anything you want fast in life.

The decisions and actions we make and take every minute, hour or day is what determines our future. If we start making better decisions and following through with them, we’ll start getting better results. It’s that simple.

So in this article, I am going to reveal to you some of the many DEADLY mistakes that I made that kept me broke for 6 years and how I overcame them and hopefully if you are making any of these mistakes today or about to make them, you may find these strategies helpful and learn how to overcome them in your life and business.

By the way, if you have got yourself burnt (which everyone has, at least those taking action) and made your own mistakes, feel free to tell us about it in the comment section below and how you dealt with it. I am sure this will help members here as well.

Now let’s get to the mistakes…

Mistake #1:
Not Having A DEFINITE
Purpose For My Business!

I had this problem for many years. I didn’t have any major purpose I was pursuing. I didn’t have any reason WHY I was doing what I was doing. And because there was no real purpose, there was no motivation and the desire to achieve it.

That’s what is happening today. Most internet marketers just set out to make money online without any real tangible purpose behind it. You’ll never be able to achieve anything worthwhile if you don’t have a definite purpose and a burning desire to achieve the purpose. You must know WHY you want to make the money you want.

Just saying I want to make $10,000 per
month isn’t enough. Why do you want to make
$10,000 per month? That is your WHY.

A good resource I will recommend for you to help you clarify your why is a book by Simon Sinek called START WITH WHY. You can get the paperback or Kindle or even the Audio CD to buy on Amazon.

Do you want the full ebook for free? Subscribe to my free course here and you can download the ebook version completely free of charge to thank you for being on my list.

Here’s The Trick: You need to have a purpose in your life and business – a major purpose that you are working towards day and night. But more than that, you want to be able to know WHY you want to achieve your major purpose. Without your ‘WHY’ it’s often difficult to achieve anything noteworthy. Think of what it will mean for you to earn the kind of money you want to be earning. This will be your ‘why’.

For instance, is it to be able to afford the school fees for your children, buy a dream house, buy a dream car, take a nice holiday, sponsor someone in need etc? What will it it mean for you to make the money that you want? That’s your reason. Find it and set it as your ultimate goal and put a deadline on it. Then go to work to achieve it.

Mistake #2:
Not Working On The Internal
But Focussing MAINLY Only
On The External Factors!

For many years I had the notion that HARD WORK only will be responsible for my success and that my success was only influenced by external forces outside of myself. But the fact is that 80% of your success will come from what is within you. Only 20% is external. I didn’t realize this for many years and I was hoping and waiting for some miracle to happen.

Your self concept (that’s the way you see yourself) is what will largely be responsible for your success or failure in anything you do. The successful people ask themselves
all the time – “what is in me that’s making me not to succeed?”
Your job is to identify that thing and resolve it.
Sometimes, it could just be a skill that you need to learn
to advance your career and life fast.

Here’s The trick: if you are not achieving success, look inside yourself for the cause and the solution. 80% of the time, it’s you who is stopping you from succeeding. The key to success is through personal development. The more you develop yourself, the more successful you become. Read in your chosen field for at least 30 minutes every day.

Mistake #3:
Not Having An Effective
Marketing Plan!

Most internet marketers don’t have any real marketing plan on how they want to ACHIEVE their business goal. Personally, I didn’t have one for many years and I paid severely for it.

It’s not enough to just get offers from affiliate programs and begin promoting them; you need to be able to choose high converting products and draw out a well thought out plan on how you want to promote and make money with the product.

For example, to succeed fast online:

You need good quality product(s) to promote. The fastest way to fail online or offline for that matter is to promote low quality, low value product(s). Promoting low quality product will damage your credibility and make you worse off financially in the long run. If you want to succeed online, choose high quality product(s) that you can proudly promote anywhere.

You need to be promoting high converting, high ticket offers. If you have a quality product, make sure the product convert well and it’s a high ticket offer. A high ticket offer is an offer where you make a decent income per sale. If your goal is to make $5,000 per month, it’s easier to sell 25 copies of a product where you make $200 per sale than 500 copies of a product where you make $10 per sale.

You need high converting sales funnel/process. The days of depending on just one product to make any worthwhile income online is gone. You need multiple products in a well optimized sales funnel. If you are an affiliate marketer, you need to be promoting high converting funnel with multiple high converting products in the funnel. It is your responsibility to identify such products. Again, this is where my course can help you.

You need high converting sales funnel/process. The days of depending on just one product to make any worthwhile income online is gone. You need multiple products in a well optimized sales funnel. If you are an affiliate marketer, you need to be promoting high converting funnel with multiple high converting products in the funnel. It is your responsibility to identify such products. Again, this is where my course can help you.

You need proper plan on how to get traffic and leads flowing into your business daily. Without constant inflow of leads to your business, the business will die prematurely before you realize it. You need traffic and more importantly you need leads before you can make any money online.

You need proper plan on how to get traffic and leads flowing into your business daily. Without constant inflow of leads to your business, the business will die prematurely before you realize it. You need traffic and more importantly you need leads before you can make any money online.

You need proper plan on how to get the leads to buy from you. Getting leads is one thing, but getting them to buy from you is another. So, you need a plan to generate leads and a good plan on how to get the leads to buy from you i.e. a good follow up system.

You need proper plan on how to get repeat sales from your buyers. This is where the money is. The only way a business can grow and succeed fast is by having repeat buyers. So you need a good follow up system and an effective plan to convert buyers into repeat buyers.

Unfortunately, this last point is a disadvantage with affiliate marketing as you are not easily able to know who your buyers are let alone able to design an effective follow up strategies for them. Just as you need a good follow up system to convert leads into sales, you also need a system to convert buyers into repeat buyers.

Here’s The Trick: Before you begin promoting or buying traffic for your products online, take the time to plan the sales process thoroughly. It’s often said that a minute of planning saves 10 minutes in execution or 10 minutes of planning will save you 90 minutes in execution. Take time to plan well before you start your promotion and you’ll be surprised how easy and quick you can get the job done and make success of your effort once you begin executing your plan.

NOTE: If you need help in creating a well optimized sales funnel for your business click here.

Mistake #4:
Not Building a List of
Subscribers!

After 6 years of marketing online, I had zero subscriber. I wasn’t building a list.

The plain truth is that if you don’t have a list of subscribers as an internet marketer, you don’t have any business online. Your list is your only asset online and so before you do anything, your number one priority should be to put together a system to build list that you can promote your product(s) to on a regular basis.

Here’s The Trick:NEVER send traffic directly to your product sales page or affiliate product sales page without first sending the traffic to your lead capture page and building your list. Even if you are an affiliate marketer, find a way to put together a lead capture page where you can collect names and email addresses before you send them to the product you are promoting.

There are so many good tools and Plugins these days that will help you to create very beautiful high converting lead capture pages. I normally use OptimizePress for all my lead capture pages but for there are other equally good software like Clickfunnels and LeadPages. For managing your subscribers Getresponse is my #1 choice but again there are so many other ones out there like Aweber and Mailchimp that you can be using.

Mistake #5:
Not Believing In Myself!

What I realized was that unless I first believed in myself no one else was going to believe in me. The same goes to you. If you don’t take yourself seriously for instance, will you expect anyone to take you seriously?

The way I overcame this was to stop putting myself down and I raised my self esteem. I started to see myself as someone whose opinions are valuable. I started to look upon myself as a valuable person. I began to expect the best of me and do my best in every situation and soon I was becoming better.

Another thing I did was to begin doing the things that I was afraid to do. I started speaking and recording myself on video. I started networking and using my expertise to help people. If I was in a forum, I wasn’t afraid to also share my views and my opinions. In fact, I started to respect myself and this made others to begin respecting me too.

Here’s The Trick: Change your opinion of yourself for the best. NEVER blame yourself for your mistakes. NEVER put yourself down for any reason. If you make mistake, so be it. Dust it off and keep moving. Guilt, fear and blame are the things that make us not to belief in ourselves. We feel guilty for what we fail to do or do right and then blame ourselves or others for our misfortune. NEVER engage in such things. They will pull you down.

Invest in your personal and professional development. Read books, listen to audio programs and watch videos that will help you to improve yourself. Chances are you are struggling now because you lack certain skills which you can easily learn. By continuously educating and investing in yourself, you’ll know more and be able to offer more to help people. When you do this, you’ll like yourself more, feel better about yourself and get better results in anything you do.

Mistake #6:
Not Going After The Money!

What do I mean by not following the money? Ok here’s what I mean. When I started marketing online, I was always worried about what products to promote and why the products I was promoting wasn’t making me money. In fact, 90% of the products I sold back then made me little or no income.

Why was this? Well, I later realized that I was doing everything the wrong way. It was much easier to first identify what people want (where the money is) and then go find the perfect products for them.

Here’s The Trick: Go after the money by looking for a need in the marketplace and then source out the BEST product that will solve that need. That’s where the money is. That’s the way to quickly make profit. Note: when you find a need, make sure it’s what lots of people want.

Mistake #7:
Not Using The Right
Traffic Sources!

This one was a major one for me and still one of the major reasons many people fail online today. Personally, it was my demon for many years. The problem here is that you are not only wasting money, you are also wasting your time and effort when you go after the wrong traffic for your products or services. This will keep you broke.

Here’s what I was doing WRONG… I would find affiliate products in the niche I was promoting in and then I would go buy traffic from different traffic sources to promote the product. I wasn’t targeting. I was doing this without first profiling the traffic sources to know whether they fit the demographic of the product I was promoting.

For example:Plenty of Fish (POF) is a dating site and they also offer advertising opportunities. Even though you can use POF to promote any type of product in any niche because of their targeting options, you’d do better with POF traffic if you use it for dating related products rather than say ‘how to make money’ products because members of POF are primarily looking for dates.

Here’s The Trick: Before you buy traffic from any source make sure to research the demographics of the sources to ensure the target audience fits perfectly to what you are selling. If you target your traffic this way, you would get higher conversions and possibly make good profit. Check the website of the traffic source. Most of the time, they would tell you who their demographic is EXCEPT they are a pay per click network like Google Adwords and Bing in which case you can laser target the right demographic. Another good way to know the demographic of the traffic source is to use sites like Alexa.com.

Mistake #8:
Not Networking and
Building Relationships!

I learnt this the hard way but thank goodness that I later corrected the course. Don’t deceive yourself by thinking you can make the kind of money you want without the help of others. You can never accomplish anything worthwhile all by yourself. You need people to help you push your dream and you can only do this by networking and building relationships with like-minded people. Like the saying goes, “a tree cannot make a forest”.

Whatever you are selling, make sure you are networking and building relationships with people in your niche because this can pay off big time for you even if not immediately but in the long run.

You need to be networking on forums and groups like Facebook groups, Google groups, yahoo groups etc. Social networking platforms like Kingged.com are also very good places to network and build relationships with like-minded people. If you do this correctly, you will be able to gain respect and build authority in your niche. Through networking you can form alliances and JV’s with other people and make more money in the process.

Here’s The Trick: Put together a list of social networking sites, groups and forums where you can network and then make a plan to participate and network with other members consistently. When you network, don’t always think of what you are going to get rather think of what you can give to help others. It’s by helping others that you’ll eventually help yourself.

Mistake #9:
Not Working On My Highest
Value Tasks and Outsourcing
The Low Paid Tasks!

We already talked about this in the beginning but I brought it up here again because it’s one of the mistakes that I made during those years.

The fact is this is what is responsible for many failures online. In the first part, I didn’t even know what I was doing wrongly that was giving me very poor results. Thanks to Brian Tracy who taught me that my level of success will be directly in proportion to the value of activities that I CHOOSE to do on a daily basis.

For example, if I am always working on low value tasks or task of low consequences, I will always continue to fail. On the other hand, if I engage on high value tasks or tasks of high FINANCIAL consequences I will be successful.

You only need to do just three tasks in your business to succeed fast:

Driving traffic and generating leads

Selling top quality, high converting, high ticket offers

Converting leads into sales and getting repeat sales

Any tasks that don’t fall into any of the three above are a waste of your time as an internet marketer and should be outsourced if you can.

Here’s The Trick: Take time to first put together a well optimized, high converting sales funnel and follow up system that generate leads, convert your leads into buyers and get your buyers to buy more from you repeatedly. Planning your marketing strategy thoroughly before you start buying traffic will save you money and make you profit fast. Once this is in place, go out, FOCUS and get traffic in bucketful to your sales funnel and watch the magic happens. This article may give you more light on how to put together a high converting sales funnel.

Mistake #10:
Not Working Hard Enough!

Many internet marketers have been deceived by the many self appointed gurus to believing that they can actually work for 3 hours a day to make their dreams of making money fast online come through. I was one of them for many years. However, this cannot be farther from the truth.

Ask any successful person, whether they be internet marketers or offline marketers. In fact, ask people who have really made success of their lives. Perhaps, people like Bill Gate, Warren Buffet and the likes. Ask top CEOs and the top internet marketing leaders how many hours they work per day and you’ll be surprised to know that on average, successful business people put in at least 10 – 12 hours a day running their business. You don’t have to do this for the rest of your life but you’ll need to do it when you are getting started. Success is a result of hard, hard work.

The fact is that if you work 8 hours a day, that’s just enough to make you a living. If you want to be successful, it takes more than 8 hours a day to do. You need to put in long uncounted hours to achieve real tangible results. So if you are the type of person that thinks 3 hours a day is what you need to make the kind of money that will change your life, you need to think again.

Here’s The Trick: Set a tangible, realistic goal and make a plan on how to achieve it. You’ll then need to cut down on your television hours, work a little late into the night and wake up a little early in the morning. Put in the time necessary to make your dream come through and you’ll achieve success.

Mistake #11:
Following and Listening To
Every Tom, Dick and Harry!

This was a BIG problem for me personally. I was constantly looking for the next big thing and the easiest fastest way to make money online. So whenever anyone comes up with something they claim can make money fast, I’ll be the first to jump on it. I ended up spending over $100,000, (yes, you heard me right, $100k+) during the period of 6 years on buying products I didn’t even need.

In some cases I bought the same product twice not knowing I had bought the product before. THIS IS INSANITY AND MUST STOP. Think of how much you’ve spent on products you didn’t need, never even used or products that didn’t live up to their expectations.The products are not the solutions.

This is a BIG problem for many internet marketers even till today. They are listening to and following everyone who claims to have the SECRET to making money. For your information, there’s no secret and I can bet you already know all the secrets there’s to know – just focus on selling top quality, high converting products and then find ways to drive traffic to it. That’s the secret.

Here’s The Trick: Try to identify at least 2-3 authority figures in your niche that you trust and then follow just them. Then, unsubscribe from all other marketers and focus on building your business. There’s nothing new under the sun. There’s no easy way to make money otherwise everyone would be rich. Just find what you are passionate about and launch out with it with passion. Building a successful business takes time. It’s like building a house. It takes one block at a time. You can’t rush it otherwise, it will crumble or collapse.

Mistake #12:
Always Looking For a
Push Button Software!

This one ties in closely with mistake #11 above and was one of the major things that dragged me back for many years. I was always looking for the next push button software that promised to make my work easier and make me money fast without me doing any work. I didn’t get rich quick but instead I got broke quicker.

Now, don’t get me wrong.

There are some very good marketing software that will make your life and business easy to run and I’ll recommend such software. In fact, I use a lot of software in my business till date. However, most of the software being pushed around these days by the fly by night weekly product launchers are designed to take your money and nothing else. They are only selling you ideas and not the real thing. They tell you the software will do everything for you while you sit back, relax and rake in the money.

A good example I can recall is some frustrations I had during my years of struggling. I remember buying some articles and video submission software – first, I spent (I mean, waste) my money buying the software, then instead of spending my time working on high value tasks that would have put money in my pocket, I was using the time learning how to use the software (working on low value task) sometimes for many days. By the time I had got the software figured out and began using it, almost on my first try, my account, where I was submitting the articles and videos would get shot down. Three days of unproductive work went down the drain and no money in my pocket.

I realized that unless I actually took steps
to do what’s necessary to get real tangible results,
I was wasting time relying on some useless software.

Look at it this way… when was the last time you bought ‘money making’ software? How did that go for you? Please share your comments below. Also, have you ever tried using software to post to Facebook groups, Pinterest, Youtube, document submission sites and video sites? How did that go for you too? Who made money – you or the software creator? Let me hear your thoughts in the comment section below…

Here’s The Trick: It’s much easier to use an outsourcer to submit videos and content for you manually than using software to do it and getting banned. You can get a lot of people to do services for you on Fiverr.com or Upwork.com and the likes. Do business the right way and you’ll enjoy the benefit for many years.

Mistake #13:
Quitting Too Quick!

This is another big one and it was a pain in my ‘you know what’. I’d attempt to do something and if I wasn’t successful at first try, I would just give up. This is one of the reasons many people fail in life – they quit and give up too soon.

In my case, I was starting and stopping, starting and stopping and never getting off the ground.

You may be surprised to know that almost nothing will work at first try. Even at second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh try, you can still fail but that doesn’t mean you quit. Like the saying goes, ‘Rome was not built in a day’. Nothing good comes easy and that’s the same with building a business – you try and fail several times until you succeed. The failures are necessary to guide you towards success. So, don’t kick yourself when you fail.

The person who succeeds is the one that starts something and complete it no matter what. So keep pushing it until you succeed. But always keep building and adding on top of what you are doing rather than starting and stopping. Keep modifying and improving on what you are doing until you refine it perfectly.

Here’s the thing – when you begin working on your goal, it’s like joining a queue. If you stop or quit at anytime, it means you leave the queue. Guess what happens when you come back again or start another thing, you’ll be starting from the bottom of the queue. This is what is happening to many people online. They start and stop but when you stop you drop out of the queue.

The only way to gain success is to enter the queue, stay in the queue and NEVER drop out. This way you will gradually move forward taking one step at a time until you reach the goal. EVEN WHEN YOU EXPERIENCE TEMPORARY DEFEAT OR FAILURE, REMAIN IN THE QUEUE AND NEVER LEAVE UNTIL YOU SUCCEED.

Here’s The Trick: As I have said in the beginning, the starting point of all successes begins with a goal, a plan and a burning desire to achieve the goal. Once you have set your goal and created a plan for its accomplishment, begin at once to work on it and NEVER stop until you have completed it. BURN ALL BRIDGES AND DON’T HAVE PLAN B. This is how great successes are achieved.

Mistake #14:
Not Focussing On My
Successes But My Failures!

I was always looking back at what I did wrongly yesterday or what I could have done better that I didn’t do. I was always blaming and criticising myself for my failures instead of looking at and concentrating on the things I was doing right.

When you focus on your failures, guess what happens, you get more failures. When you focus on your failures you are like always looking back. Tell me, how many athletes have ever won any race always looking back. No one I suppose.

Here’s The Trick:Always focus on your winnings and successes. Always be positive and look for the good in every situation. Be grateful and be very optimistic at all times. Even when you meet with temporary failures, do not dwell on it. Move past it very quickly or try to find a solution to resolve the issue. Successful people are action and solution oriented people. Failures, on the other hand always dwell on their failures and often blame others for their misfortunes. Don’t let this happen to you.

Mistake #15:
Not Actively, Deliberately
and CONSISTENTLY Going
After Traffic!

This was a major factor in my lack of success in my early days. I wasn’t DELIBERATELY going after traffic. Deliberate and consistent are the keywords here. I expected traffic to just come to me instead of going after it.

I later realised that to get traffic, I needed to become a traffic hunter – to go after traffic and throw my product into every place that can accept it – forums, videos, guest posting blogs, classified ads sites, banner ad sites, social media sites and everywhere the product can be accepted. And to get constant results, I needed to be CONSISTENT.

What about SEO traffic? If you want to succeed fast marketing on the internet I’d suggest you avoid SEO in the beginning and focus only on the sources that can get you traffic fast. SEO will frustrate you especially if you are new to internet marketing. BY THE WAY… SEO is better used when you have identified keywords that are making you money through PPC. Those are the keywords to target for SEO. Just picking any keyword using keywords tools and going after it is equivalent to lack of planning.

Here’s The Trick: Make traffic your daily priority and be consistent with it because that’s where your money is. Like I said above, any task that does not bring traffic, leads and sales to your business is a waste of your time and should be outsourced or avoided at all cost.

Mistake #16:
Not Having Long
Term Perspectives!

I wanted to make money and make it very fast. I didn’t have a long term perspectives. I didn’t have like 6 months, 1 year, 3 years or even 5 years plan.

Don’t expect to be successful overnight. Success takes time and it’s often after very long period of relentless hard work. It takes months and years to accomplish noteworthy goals so it’s always a good idea to project into the future. How do you want your life and business to be in the future i.e. in 3-5 years?

Here’s the thing – Long term thinking improves short term decision making. If you think long term, you are often going be able to make better short term decisions because you'll have no cause to be desperate for the moment. When things are not working out well in the short term, you are not frustrated because you know it would take time to reach your goal. You are planning 6, 9, 12 months ahead and taking gradual steps toward achieving your goal.

The difference between the successful and the failures is that the successful thinks long term in terms of how their life will be in the future whereas the failures only think of now and what they can get right now.

Here’s The Trick: Think of where you want your business to be in 5 years and then draw up a plan on how you want to reach there. The best trick to do this is to have a CLEAR picture in your mind what you want your business to be like in 5 years. Try and see the clear picture – how much will you be earning, how many staff will you have working for you, how will the office environment look like, what will be the kind of activities going on everyday in your business. Picture how you are going to be enjoying the business.

Now see yourself as if you are already leaving in the 5 years right at this moment. If your business was doing well as you have pictured it, how will your life be? What kind of lifestyle will you be leaving? What kind of car or house will you be leaving in? What kind of friends will you have etc

Once you have this picture in your mind, come back to the present reality and draw out a plan on how you are going to get from where you are now to that picture you have in your mind. Often you’ll be able to see a straight connecting line because you already took the time to develop the picture. Whatever that picture is, just know that it’s all possible. So, right at that moment, start where you are with your most important task towards achieving your ultimate goal. Follow the line and soon you’ll reach the destination.

Mistake #17:
Not Testing, Tracking and
Measuring My Campaigns!

If you are not testing, tracking and measuring your marketing campaigns, you are not marketing at all. Every good marketer knows the importance of testing and tracking results. If you don’t test and track you cannot measure and if you are not measuring your results, you can’t improve and grow your business.

For many years I didn’t even know what testing and tracking meant let alone do it. Again this is another disadvantage with being an affiliate marketer. When you promote other people’s product, there’s very little you can do in terms of tracking your sales and if you are not tracking sales, you won’t know which of your marketing methods are working and which ones are just wasting you money. You can’t scale if you don’t know where your money is coming from.

Here’s The Trick: Track every aspect of your marketing. Track all of your traffic sources to know which of them are working and which ones aren’t. If you are buying traffic, you want to know how many leads and sales you got from each campaign. You also want to track your follow up messages so you can improve on your conversions. It’s only when you track that you can measure your results. There are so many tracking tools out that you can be using. A good one I would recommend would be Clickmagick. If you want a free one Google analytics is your best bet but it can take a bit of learning curve.

People will only connect with your dream to the extent you connect with it yourself. This is what should happen to you… First, you get your dream and then your dream gets you. In other words, your dream must possess you. You must be obsessed with it.

Until you are at this state of mind, it’s usually very difficult to achieve the dream. You must become one with your dream which means you must sleep and wake up with it. Your eyes must always be on the goal you’ve set for yourself and how you are going to accomplish it.

This is the same thing with marketing online.

You must be OBSESSED about getting results. It's the obsession that will make you to work at it and get going all the time even when times are difficult. This is what create the results.

Here’s The Trick: Only promote products you love. That way, you’ll be proud to tell everyone about it. Promote products that are of very good quality and product that actually help people genuinely. You won’t have any difficulty telling people about such products which is what marketing is about. You’ll want to promote such products all the time especially when it converts well and they are high ticket offers.

Here’s the fact: You only need ONE product to make a million dollars – so look for that product.

When you are not too sure of what you are selling and you are probably just in the game to make money, it’s often very difficult to connect with it emotionally. And if you don’t connect and be passionate about the product you are selling it’s also usually very difficult to make success out of it.

Mistake #19:
Not Committing To
Continuous Learning!

The more you learn from the experts in your field, the more action you are inclined to take yourself. Learning causes you to take action. But this was a big mistake for me in the beginning. I thought I could do it with the knowledge I had. I thought I knew it all but boy was I wrong?

What you must know is that every day your skill is declining and becoming obsolete and unless you are upgrading it continuously, you will be left out in the dust. Whatever you are EARNING today is what the economy thinks you are worth. To earn more, you must worth more. To worth more, you must learn and increase your skills. That’s the secret.

I later realised that learning on its own is a very powerful weapon in the sense that it’s got the power to attract to you those things you are learning about. When you learn, you know what the successful people know and are doing and when you do the same things you get the same results.

Here’s The Trick: Choose your teachers carefully. There are so many unqualified teachers out there. You want to learn from the experts, the doers and the successful people because they will teach you what’s working. Do what the successful are doing and you’ll be successful.

Mistake #20:
Not Taking MASSIVE Action!

The only action that gets results is MASSIVE ACTION. Without massive action, your result is going to be weak and below expectation.

For instance, I was participating in forums and building relationships with people. I was writing content and submitting them to top content sites, I was buying some traffic but I wasn’t doing them ENOUGH. Instead I was playing around with push button software which was giving me nothing back in return.

A very good example is I belonged to two or three forums but I was only participating in one, maybe once a week or once in two weeks. At that rate, I couldn’t expect to get enough traffic to make me money. It would have been possible for me to sign up to at least 10 – 15 forums where I diligently and consistently participate every day and every week. That’s is MASSIVE action.

Here’s The Trick: I know of someone, who in order to get traffic through guest blogging was writing and posting six guest posts per week. In less than six months, he was getting over 100,000 visitors per month to his website. That’s MASSIVE action.

If you expect to get any reasonable result, massive action is what you need to take. Don’t leave anything to chance. Average effort will yield almost nothing at all. Like the saying goes, if you sow sparingly, you are bound to reap sparingly but if you sow bountifully, you’ll reap bountifully. In the beginning of your career, you need the greatest of effort and force to kick it off.

Mistake #21:
Being Afraid To Invest
In My Business!

If you want to make money fast online, you must be prepared to invest some money to start and grow your business. For me I wasn’t prepared to do this for many years. I was afraid to lose the money. However, I was spending money on ebooks and push button software. This is not investment and certainly not the kind of investment I am talking about.

If you want to succeed in business, you must be prepared to advertise and it will cost you money to do so. This is where you must be spending money instead of buying shinning objects. Many people don’t want to buy advertising for fear of losing their money but if you are promoting high converting, high ticket offers, have good marketing plan and then test small before investing a lot into media buying, you will often make profit when you advertise online. Once you found what works, you can scale it to make more money.

Here’s The Trick: Don’t be afraid to spend money on advertising. Start small and test first. Then once you found something that works, scale it. That’s the fastest way to make money online. Oh… ensure you are selling quality high value product that have a well optimized sales funnel before you go buying traffic. I can’t stress this enough.

Mistake #22:
Being A Wandering
Generality!

To make money online, you need to be a specialist in at least one area. You need to be able to claim expertise in one area of internet marketing. For me, for six years, I was everything to everybody. I didn’t have any specialized knowledge.

By specialized knowledge, I mean you must be an expert in something. Either you are an expert in video marketing, content marketing, Facebook marketing, PPC advertising or something. You can’t be jack of all trade otherwise you’ll be master of none. You can’t know everything and it’s only when you become an expert in just one thing that you can really excel fast in your career and sell your skill for money.

Unless people see you as an expert, they won’t believe what you are saying and the result is that they won’t buy from you either.

Here’s The Trick: You need to set yourself up as an expert so people can believe in you. Actually, you don’t need to know everything in your field. Find what you love and decide to be amongst the top 10% of the people in that field. Then from there on, live and breathe that thing.

Educate yourself in that field and always seek to learn new things every day by reading articles and books in the field. This is how to claim expertise asnd acquire specilized knowledge and it will set you apart from the majority of people out there who don’t know anything. Now, use your new found skills to begin helping people and making money.

Mistake #23:
Not Developing The
Right Key Skills For
My Success!

Key skill is different from specialized knowledge. As an internet marketer, the key skill you must development is getting traffic and creating conversions. And unless you know these two things, you can never progress fast online.

Here’s what you must know – your key skill area is what is going to set the height at which you use all your other skills. You need to be very good at one key skill that will help you the most in your business.

Here’s The Trick: Determine to be good and driving traffic and conversions for your internet business. If you can master these two areas, the sky will be your limit. The fastest way to be good at these is to take courses that will help you but more important to go out in the trenches and start putting what you are learning to work.

You need to know that what you learn in any course is only there to guide you. Your results are always going to be different from everybody else and you won’t know what results you get until you take action and do stuff. To be good at conversions, you must learn how to test and track every aspect of your marketing.

Mistake #24:
Not Having Fun and Enjoying The Process!

This one pulled me down for many years. I wasn’t having fun with my business. This probably was because I wasn’t making money to have fun. Ironically, I needed to be having the fun first before I can ACTUALLY make the money. I didn’t know that.

If you are having fun with your business, whenever something doesn’t go well, it doesn’t gets to you. You’d normally see it as a challenge and then try to find a way to resolve it. If you love what you do, you can’t wait to wake up the following morning to begin work and this is the attitude that makes money and creates wealth.

Now, consider this…

Shouldn't it be fun to experiment on different traffic sources to see which ones generate the best return on investment for your product? This way you can improve on what’s working and then scale up fast?

As an affiliate marketer, shouldn’t it be fun to test three different products at a time against a particular traffic source to see which product converts the best for you and then focus on promoting that one through that traffic source for higher profitability? Won’t you make money fast that way?

Shouldn't it be fun to write good contents or maybe get someone to write them for you and then distribute them to social media? Won’t you like to see your content being read and shared everywhere?

Shouldn't it be fun to network and build good relationships with other like-minded people in your niche? Won’t this make you much happier, more relevant and make you more money?

If you consider any of the above to be WORK, then you’re in the wrong business.

Here’s The Trick: money comes quicker when you are having fun doing what you do best and you don’t care so much about the outcome. If you take your business as a game, expect the best result but you are still going to be ok with whatever outcome you get whether good or bad, then you’ll be successful in business. So, find a way to make what you do fun and you’ll reap the reward financially.

The Conclusion

You must always remember that the only antidote to failure is ACTION. Talking, blaming and giving excuses will not get you the result you want. The only way you are going to get result is by taking action CONSISTENTLY. So learn from my lessons and go ahead to begin creating your own success online avoiding these mistakes. I wish you the best of luck.

NOTE: If you’ve found this article to be useful and helpful, why not share it on your social media accounts and with anyone you think may benefit from it. You’ll be helping to save someone from getting burnt in the wrong way and most importantly helping them achieve their financial goal faster.

What about yourself? Can you relate to any of the above mistakes? If so, share it below and let is know if you are still struggling with it or if you have resolved it, how you did it. Go ahead express yourself…

Claire

I’m very happy for you, Jeff! I’m happy you made it after what surely seemed like a lifetime of failures. Please, never call yourself a failure because that is false – you just did your best and it didn’t work out. You failed many times but you were never a failure. You probably learned a lot of lessons from those times and without those 6 years you wouldn’t be where you are today. Thanks for sharing this with us all; very inspiring!

Your first “mistake” is something I’m fighting with right now. I can’t find my reason why, that one thing that can take me from where I am now to where I want to get. I’ve asked myself multiple times: “What it is that I really want from my life? What would I like to accomplish before I die?” but there doesn’t seem to be something that fills me with joy and motivation when I think about it. I know it sounds weird but that’s the way I feel right now.

Subscribe to my course and download a free ebook on how to identify your why

Samuel

Bookmarked this post so I can read it again and again. It will also act as an added motivation for me since I’m on my way to reaching those 6 years as well. I’m almost 4 years into my little online business and by now I must have failed at least 20 times with different projects. I can related to a LOT of things you said and while it’s hard to have to go through these experiences, your story reminds me there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.

Terence

It’s funny you mentioned “Eat That Frog” because a friend of mine keeps telling me to read it. I think it’s been 6 months since he first mentioned it and I still haven’t taken the time for it. But now you’ve made me very curios and I will read it this week for sure. I myself have had 2 failed business attempts and have learned so many things from this that I could easily write a 300+ page book about.

Mary

Don’t even get my started about self confidence! I’m so weak when it comes to believing in myself. I usually doubt my action several times daily. Why? Probably because of my parents and my entourage when I was a kid. They always made sure they would “encourage” me whenever I made mistakes until I started hating making mistakes. Instead of learning from them I was trying to avoid them. The question is how do I get out of this? How do I change my thinking? I want to stop doubting myself but it’s quite difficult to actually do it.

Search The Site

Search for:

Who’s Jeffrey Benson?

I am an online business development strategist, a coach and a conversion specialist with over 10 years in the trenches as a full time internet marketer. I enjoy helping entrepreneurs build sustainable and profitable business online. I have helped over 150 people setup successful online business. Do you need help with making your online business a success? Use the menu above to schedule a free 30 minutes business appraisal session with me now (Value: $297).